Tag Archives: self-employment

On May 31st, I celebrated being four full-time years in business with my team, but decided to write a bit of the story on our Facebook page. Here it is!

May 31st, 2013 at around 10:35 AM I decided to take my part-time business in multimedia started somewhere around April 9th, 2009 full-time. I had been pursuing odds and ends jobs throughout my undergraduate, exploring my options after graduating from college, and after some major downs, took the leap with the encouragement of only my parents and Ann.

Through thick, thin, and everything in between, I have kept it going profitably for 4 years. While drumming brings me joy and teaching college is a level of giving back I never thought I would experience in my life (leading me through grad school), running this thing I started with a simple email from a potential client (Stacy Hamilton, actually!) while taking a break at the gym all those years ago in 2009 has taken me more places, brought me into the lives of more incredible people, and allowed for things in my life to happen faster than I ever anticipated, even being a proverbial “millennial who hasn’t had to work for anything.” Trust me when I say, I’ve never worked harder.

I’ve shared the story of taking it full-time, but I’ve never really shared the story of why I ever wanted to start a business to begin with. It’s pretty short. That fateful spring of 2009 where I started, I was in the middle of transferring to Carroll because UW-Whitewater had written me a letter, suggesting I do anything else with my life because they felt I wasn’t cut out for multimedia. Just as I have done with everything since I was a kid, I merely thought to myself “I’ll show them.”

Well, 4 full-time years, 9 years total, I’ve gotten to do a lot. Whether it was producing an evidence video that helped save someone innocent for a law firm, calling Aaron Rodgers “Mr. Rodgers” by accident on a commercial shoot, designing graphics for the majority of Milwaukee’s music and nightlife scene, or watching about 50+ couples say “I do” from the edit screen of Adobe Premiere, I’m glad I did exactly what my parents dreaded when I was younger. Ignore a professional’s advice.

And now, I’m slowly but surely growing a team of freelancers to help with the work I’ve got, giving back as much as I can to budding entrepreneurs, and even diversifying (hopefully) into other industries, because let’s be real, I like a lot of stuff.

If I’ve learned anything so far from business, it’s that life is a playground. Don’t ever settle in anything, even outside of your career. Don’t ever let anyone fit you into a standard they believe you belong in, because the only person that knows you best is you. Don’t categorize yourself, because we can all be great at anything we try. And most importantly, take a chance. If you fail, it’s only practice. Success isn’t this “end product,” success is trying and continuing on.
It’s awfully nice out, maybe I’ll take some time off today. Thanks for reading, and thanks for being in my life.